A Creed for the Third Millennium (30 page)

'Shit, shit, shit!' hissed Dr Judith
Carriol, erupting into Dr Moshe Chasen's cluttered office.

Startled was too mild; he was shocked. In
all the years he had known her, he had never seen his chief in a royal rage
before. And a right royal rage it was. Her eyes were big water-worn stones,
basilisk-staring, and her whole body was visibly shaking.

He thought immediately of Dr Joshua
Christian and the newly titled Operation Messiah; surely nothing else had the
power to rattle this woman!

'What's gone wrong?'

'That
bloody
fool!' She was so
incensed she could find no stronger adjective. 'Do you know what he did to
me?'

'No,' said Dr Chasen, naturally assuming
she was referring to Harold Magnus.

'He accepted an invitation from Tibor
Reece to see that silly slut of a wife of his! Without telling me! How dared he?
How
dared
he?'

'Judith, how dared who, for crying out
loud?'

'Who does he think he is, gallivanting
off to the White House without so much as a by-your-leave? What's he done? I
will tell you what he's done! Fucked up everything!'

The truth was dawning. 'Not Kublai Khan?
Joshua?'

'Of course Joshua! Who else could be so
unworldly?'

'My God!' Dr Chasen's brain went
connecting the wrong threads again and wove a picture of Dr Christian falling
victim to the First Lady's undeniable charms. Of course the whole of Washington
knew she was frisky, but thought little of it; every man in public office had an
Achilles heel, and the wife was almost as good a bet as a more illicit woman. Or
man. Or whatever. 'Well, for God's sake tell me what's happened, Judith! Did
someone like T.R. himself catch our Josh with his pants down in the First Lady's
chamber?'

Dr Carriol was beginning to regain her
equilibrium, so she contented herself with casting her confidant a glance of
withering scorn. 'Oh, Moshe, how dumb can you be? Not
that!
T.R. asked
him to come down to Washington and work a miracle cure on
Jolly Jumbo Julia. And he actually went! Without telling me! So he screwed it
up, of course. He went there without being briefed, he didn't know what the hell
he was walking into, and there was sure no laying on of hands, I can tell you!
Instead of having the hots for him, J.J.J, went right the other way. Probably
he's so like T.R. to look at, how do I know? All I do know is that she's totally
reversed the President's high opinion of Joshua and his book, and she is out to
get Joshua no matter what!'

'Oh, shit indeed.' But his brain was
starting to function clearly again, so he asked, 'How did you find
out?'

'I fixed myself up with a date with Gary
Mannering a couple of weeks ago because I knew he was one of Julia's most
faithful cicisbeos. Why else would I go out with the guy? He's a creep! The only
way he could get it in would be if someone dropped it in for him. Like all her
lotharios. The macho's a full molecule thick and the IQ's about six points
higher than plant life, but the pedigree's faultless and the money's wall to
wall.'

Dr Chasen was fascinated, never having
seen this oddly feminine side to Dr Carriol before. It embarrassed him, he
couldn't really say why. Except that maybe if a man was saddled with a woman
boss, he was more comfortable if she remained one of the boys at all times. This
present mood of Judith's was too close to what he called powder-room stuff. 'Why
pick Gary Mannering? Why not an aide or an executive officer? I presume it's the
President you want to know about, not Julia.'

'An aide or an executive officer would
smell a rat if I started asking questions about the President And Joshua is not
the kind of incendiary topic he'd save to discuss during working hours. He'd be
much more likely to discuss Joshua casually over dinner. I mean, there's no
secret our man is producing a book, and I know the President didn't intend to
keep quiet about having read it. So the best way I could
figure to keep tabs on what the President really thinks about Joshua was to get
to know one of his wife's boyfriends. That simple, Moshe.'

'My God, Judith, you're devious! So tell
me the rest.'

'Gary Mannering phoned me not five
minutes ago and told me about Joshua's visit — and his effect on Julia. And I
had to come somewhere to let off steam or the whole of this side of the building
would have blown apart. It's too public up there in Magnus's
corridor.'

'Maybe the report is exaggerated? Too
one-sided?'

Her rage was almost gone. 'Could be, I
suppose,' she admitted grudgingly. 'Let's hope it is! But how dared he, Moshe?
How dared he make a move like that without telling me, without asking my
advice?'

Dr Chasen looked sly. 'Do I detect just a
tad of badly wounded ego, Judith?'

'Wounded ego be damned! It's
him!
He's like handling a greased pig. Oh, God, Moshe, what am I going to do? How
long is it going to take the President to kill Operation Messiah before it's
even off the ground? Here, wait a minute!' She grabbed at his phone and punched
John Wayne's extension. 'John? Has Mr Reece or Mr Magnus been trying to reach
me? Oh. Well, if you need me or if either of them should call, I'm in Dr
Chasen's office. Okay?' She hung up. 'No word from the big boys yet.'

'When was this supposed to have
happened?'

'Saturday.'

'It's Monday afternoon now, Judith.
Plenty of time for the President to have contacted Kublai Khan and killed our
beloved Messiah stone dead if he was going to.'

'Not him! He's too deliberate, he'd think
it over from all sides. No, Moshe, we've got to sweat for a few days
yet'

Another line of thought occurred to Dr
Chasen. 'Then how about getting the true story from Joshua?'

The second baleful glare in minutes
daggered its way to Dr Chasen. 'How can I do that, Moshe? How can I do that and
not give too much away? In some of his incarnations he's a dear, sweet, absent,
bumbling fool, but in other incarnations he's the sharpest and most dangerously
perceptive guy I've ever met. And I don't know if I'm ever going to know him
well enough to pick when he's going to zip from one state of being to the other.
Damn! Damn, damn, damn!'

Moshe Chasen saw what he thought was the
light. 'My God! I didn't realize!'

'Realize what?'

'You're in love with Joshua!'

She reared up and back with the speed and
horrific menace of a cobra; Dr Chasen literally shoved his chair
away.

'I am not in love with Joshua Christian,'
she said, her teeth bared. 'I am in love with Operation Messiah.' And she turned
on her heel and walked out.

Dr Chasen picked up his telephone and
punched John Wayne's extension. 'John? If you're smart you'll dig yourself a
hole and hide. The boss is on her way up, and she is not a happy
woman.'

His computer readouts had quite lost
their usual allure; he finished pushing his chair back and sat for a long time
just looking out his window. Shit. It sure was easier to deal with so many human
beings they had to be reduced to nice anonymous ciphers. The big question was
whether Judith could survive this first encounter with a flesh-and-blood
statistic.

God in Cursing: A New Approach to
Millennial Neurosis,
by Joshua Christian, Ph.D. (Chubb), came out on Friday,
October 29, of the year 2032, in hardcover and paperback simultaneously, both
published by the Atticus Press, though the paperback bore the Scroll Books
imprint.

The in-house gossip had reached boiling
point by the end of June, the in-trade gossip was spreading from New York to
London, Paris, Milan and Frankfurt by the end of July, and finally halfway
through August the unprecedented wraps which had been kept on the book were
broken by issue of the bound galleys to the Atticus sales staff for presentation
to major booksellers. This edition of uncorrected proofs was limited to two
thousand copies and of course not destined for sale, but because everyone
confidently expected them to become collector's items later on, those lucky
enough to be given one carried it everywhere with them, even to the
toilet.

The whole publishing industry buzzed with
the name of Dr Joshua Christian, papers began to leak little articles about the
book, and only the horrors of travel prevented droves of journalists from making
premature forays to West Holloman. A few intrepid byline hunters did, of course,
but got little for their pains save Mama, who was more than a match for any
journalist, and besides looked far too young to be the mother of a distinguished
Ph.D. Truth to tell, she revelled in those early tastes of the fame to come, and
in the compliments showered upon her.

After hot debate within the Atticus
house, it was finally decided that the world was not to
know very much about Dr Joshua Christian until it watched the premier NBC talk
show, 'Tonight with Bob Smith', on the night of Friday, October 29. The Atticus
publicity director was still walking on air, unable to believe that she had
finally cracked the big one, number-one guest spot following right on the
monologue; in the history of the show it had never been given to an unknown
writer before his book was the talk of at least a big portion of the country.
But from the moment the publicity director picked up her phone to begin the
hi-there-how-are-you-dear-old-buddy-boy-have-I-got-a-guest-for-you routine,
things happened with the kind of magic ease usually found only within the pages
of children's books. One show after another agreed to give Dr Christian its
prime guest spot before the dazed publicity director had a chance to get into
full stride — sure, sure, any day she wanted was fine, sure, sure, let us know
later. And shows like 'Tonight with Bob Smith', that never committed themselves
to any untried guest without exhaustive pre-interviews, waived the rules of
decades in order to accommodate Dr Joshua Christian. There was not even one show
that attempted to bluff the publicity director into granting an 'exclusive'.
Unbelievable! Gorgeous! What was going on, for Pete's sake?

Of course the book was a runaway long
before it was officially published, and it went into the
Times
as number
one on both hardcover and mass market bestseller lists. The reviews were
uniformly wonderful, many of them raves;
Publishers Weekly,
the
Kirkus
Reviews,
and the
Times Book Review
all led with articles about
God
in Cursing
and its author. But the most encouraging fact of all to the
Atticus sales representatives who hawked their wares to booksellers all over the
country under ghastly conditions of travel and accommodation was the response of
these booksellers to
God in Cursing
once they had read it. They
didn't gush, they didn't rave. They spoke of the
book with extreme respect, and they refused to part with their own copies even
if these were not the coveted bound proofs.

Not all the combined resources of NBC
were sufficient to ensure that Bob Smith had read
God in Cursing;
Bob
Smith refused to read a book whose author was likely to appear as a guest on his
show. He believed that a writer guesting on his show was better approached fresh
and uncluttered, and as a technique of interviewing it had stood up to the test
of time remarkably well.

Atlanta, Georgia, was the home of all the
national media networks. They had moved out of New York City in the eighties and
nineties of the previous century, and out of L.A. soon after the beginning of
the third millennium, driven from both places by prohibitive rents, airport
hassles, unions, the cost of gas, and a multitude of other problems. Where they
would go from Atlanta when its turn came not to need the networks they didn't
know, but they figured there was always going to be somewhere to welcome them
with open arms, and they were probably right.

Before he left for Atlanta and his
appearance on 'Tonight with Bob Smith', Dr Joshua Christian was subjected to the
horror of a major press conference for newspapers only; the periodicals, news
magazines, Sunday supplements and the rest of the printed media were slotted
into Dr Christian's Atlanta stay, as was network radio. He acquitted himself at
this press conference surprisingly well, undismayed by the exploding flashes and
the questions fired at him from faces he could hardly see. But it was no
occasion to provoke the Christian fireworks, which pleased the Atticus publicity
director, who wanted him to save the big stuff for Bob Smith. However, she knew
him well enough by this time not to make the
mistake of telling him that.

There were mysteries about the man she
couldn't fathom. For instance, how had Atticus managed to secure helicopter
transport for him wherever he was scheduled to go? Even Toshio Yokinori, who
held the Nobel Prize for Literature and was a top movie star into the bargain,
could not command the like. Nothing daunted, the publicity director travelled
with Dr Christian by car from the Atticus offices on Park Avenue down to the old
heliport on the East River, nervous as a hen with one chick, picking and
clucking at a piece of fluff on his old tweed jacket and bemoaning the blueness
of his beard shadow. He sat, the dear man, quite unruffled and
unimpressed.

They flew him down from New York to
Atlanta in a smart little helicopter that, had he know it, belonged to the
President's fleet but had been repainted for this special assignment. So it
could travel close to the speed of sound and was most comfortably finished
inside. Never naive about the problems that beset his fellow men and women, he
was naive enough personally to assume that this mode of transport was the norm
for Atticus authors (the publicity director had held her tongue); certainly he
had no idea that the government of the United States of America was picking up
the bill for the entire exercise, from helicopter to ground vehicles to
hotels.